Huge Thanks To: Kakashis-First-Kiss for being an awesome beta, without her I'd have to subject you all to my horrid grammar and spelling!
Thanks To: hogo-chan, Dreamsofdragons, Odoori Kimura, geka0taitsume0taikaiyou, Liana Uchiha, Syciara-Lynx, Anonymous Sister of the Author, DarkRavie, ExplodingChickenOfDoom, and KitsuneyJenfner for reviewing!
I would like to offer an apology for the SaiNaru, it is something that I promised my sister, Flightless Bird, a long time and she not only knows where I sleep but sleeps in the same room. Trust me, not including one of her favorite ships when I said I would, would be bad. But I promise that I kept Kabuto alive for a reason and KabuNaru is still the main point of this story. So Anonymous Sister of the Author in particular I'm sorry.
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Kabuto stood beneath the cold sun. This winter seemed colder than years before, and nothing seemed to make Kabuto warm again. The cold air hurt his lungs to breathe…and yet he still stood here, watching the setting sun.
"Come with me," the wind in the barren trees whispered. Kabuto shook his head. Insanity might be a prerequisite for working for Orochimaru, but hearing voices was going a little far.
"Come back with me," the wind begged. Something golden flickered in Kabuto's peripheral vision and he spun around. For one brief moment he saw a tan boy with golden hair, standing in broken sunlight that seeped down through the leafless trees.
"Kabuto," the wind whispered and Kabuto took a quick step forward, hope suddenly filling his heart. But the illusion cruelly shattered, leaving nothing but a few golden leaves clinging stubbornly to the dormant tree. Kabuto laughed bitterly. Now he wasn't only hearing things, but seeing things as well. He should see a doctor…except he was the doctor. Kabuto laughed again, and he walked down to the constant cool of the underground.
As the darkness settled around him Kabuto felt two sets of charka flare up. Kabuto could tell by the edges on the overwhelming power flares that this wasn't training, these ninja meant to kill one another. Kabuto eyes widened as he recognized the charka signatures. It would seem that Sasuke and Orochimaru had come to the end of their agreement…and Sasuke wasn't paying up.
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Naruto lay sprawled out over Sai's sofa, giving the ceiling a blank look. He hated Sai's dark little apartment. He hated its dim walls covered with pictures with blank name tags. If Sai wasn't going to name the picture then why did he feel the need to put little blank tags beneath them? The pictures obviously meant something, for someone who claimed to feel nothing Sai sure was dramatic.
Naruto rolled his eyes; Sai's weirdness was a subject that one could spend a whole afternoon considering, but it wasn't what Naruto cared to waste his time with. No, he still had the problem of that voice that spoke to him in the shadows and seeped into his dreams. It was worse now, because he couldn't wrap himself in memories of Kabuto anymore. Every time he'd try to replace the monster with Kabuto the image somehow got tangled with Sai's, which left Naruto feeling dirty and very guilty. Trying to replace Kabuto with Sai had been dumb idea; you don't get to pick who you fall in love with or when it happens.
But that wasn't what Naruto wanted to spend this afternoon thinking about either. No, he had decided he needed a plan. He couldn't stay the way he was, it would destroy the little scrap of a human soul that still lived in him. Konoha was no longer a place he could call home. His fingers skated across the long scars on his wrists. The only way to not belong to the monster in the shadows was to belong to someone else, and Naruto only knew one person he could ever belong to. It was just a matter of finding him.
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Sai watched Naruto from the shadows of the branches of a tree outside the open wind. He knew that the boy couldn't see him even if he'd bothered to look. He watched with curiosity as Naruto stroked the scars that marred the prefect skin of his arms. Sai had seen for himself that unlike most ninja those scars on Naruto's wrists and the two on his face were the only to grace his body. It was one of many confusing facts about Naruto. The only other ninja that Sai knew that bore no marks of their trade were ninja like him. Raised from infancy to be assassins and thieves, and likely as not to never engage in fair hand-to-hand combat.
More curious than the absence of a history written in scars were the feelings that Naruto raised in Sai. Not emotion really, or at least not in a form that Sai could recognize. No, these feelings were more primeval; these were refined emotions. They consisted of the desire to dominate and to make something beautiful belong to oneself alone. Sai was not fool enough to say that he loved Naruto, or even cared for the boy. He knew his desire was much less whimsical and very much for tangible and there less dangerous. It was only if he actually started to care for Naruto that he would be in danger of becoming weak. He knew that if such a weakness ever presented itself he would simply have to rid himself of Naruto the way a gardener prunes dying branches from a tree.
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AN: I didn't get killed! I'm still not sure how that worked out but I'm smart enough not to ask questions! I have however been very busy and will stay very busy until after Christmas, it sucks when your mom is a priest Christmas means lots of work at church and lots and lots and lots of acolyte and I'm the acolyte master so even when I'm not doing it I have to help! But I digress. The point is I'm busy and so expect delays in the updates… again. -Morana